M WAQAR.....
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary.Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
--Albert Einstein !!!
NEWS,ARTICLES,EDITORIALS,MUSIC... Ze chi pe mayeen yum da agha pukhtunistan de.....(Liberal,Progressive,Secular World.)''Secularism is not against religion; it is the message of humanity.''
تل ده وی پثتونستآن

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Officials said Umar Mansour alias Umar Naray was killed along with another militant leader, Qari Saifullah, in the Bandar area of Afghanistan.

The mastermind of the Pakistani Taliban attack on an Army school in Peshawarthat left over 140 schoolchildren dead in 2014 has been killed in a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan, security officials said.

Officials said Umar Mansoor alias Umar Naray was killed along with another militant leader, Qari Saifullah, in the drone attack in the Bandar area of Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province on Saturday.

An official said they had credible reports of Mansour having been killed with Saifullah, who was in charge of Taliban suicide bombers, the Dawn reported.

“What we have is pretty credible,” he was quoted as saying in the report.

The massacre on December 16, 2014, left 144 students and staff members dead after seven gunmen of the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) stormed the Army Public School in the northwestern Pakistani city.

The U.S. State Department, on May 25, designated Umar Mansour as a global terrorist, clearing the path for his inclusion in its hit list.

There was no confirmation of Mansour’s death from either the TTP or any independent source. If true, his death would be a severe blow to the terror group.

Mansour, because of his violent and major terrorist attacks, was regarded by Pakistani security agencies as a major threat.

By VinayKaura

Pakistan cannot fight against some terrorist groups and not against others. It cannot dismantle one without the other.

The conceptualisation and operationalisation of Pakistan’s counterterrorism policies have been inconsistent, contradictory and flawed. Pakistan’s foreign affairs adviser Sartaj Aziz’s latest pronouncement has once again exposed Pakistan military’s lack of sincerity in its counter-terror priorities. Citing fears about blowback from terrorist organisations, Aziz reduced himself to be defending Pakistan’s lack of strong action against the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network. He said: “We have to make sure that we move in a decisive way, but at a measured pace and according to our capacity, and ensuring that the blowback is manageable.”

Here again, we are faced with ambiguity, and this is not clarified by Aziz’s statement that was unnecessary and undesirable. From a common sense point of view, his statement meant that seeking a crackdown on all terrorist organisations at once would overstretch the army and lead to more terrorist backlash. Whether or not this is a defeatist mentality, it effectively indicates Pakistan’s backtracking on its explicit commitment that there will no longer be a policy of differentiation between the “good” and the “bad” Taliban. In fact, it will do more damage than good to the prospects for peace.

Despite Islamabad’s repeated proclamations that Pakistan no longer distinguishes between good and bad terrorists, it has been common knowledge that the good Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network have been spared by Pakistan military in its campaign against terrorist safe havens. But Aziz’s public assertion is certainly an alarming reversal of Pakistan’s officially stated policy. It would be naïve to treat his statement as a clumsy attempt at explaining the existing policy — enshrined in the much-trumpeted National Action Plan in 2015 — to treat all terrorist groups as an existential threat that needs to be tackled by their eventual elimination. Pakistan’s foreign office has made no effort to clarify his statement. If what Aziz has said has already been embedded in the official counterterrorism policy of Pakistan, then it is the abandonment of the National Action Plan. It is a classic example of why Pakistan is in a constant state of negativity and self-destruction.

Has Pakistan ever been sincere in rooting out terrorism? Since 2001, the US has provided close to $14 billion in Coalition Support Funds to Pakistan. This is in addition to more than $11 billion in economic assistance to Pakistan funded by the American exchequer. Although the US has conditioned its aid to Pakistan on meeting certain standards, including “demonstrating a sustained commitment to combating terrorist groups on Pakistani soil,” the US administration has had to waive these conditions on grounds that it was in America’s national security interests to continue the funding despite the legislative conditions not being met. Besides pumping billions of dollar in Pakistan, the US has so far been liberal in granting Pakistan access to sophisticated military hardware.

Historical and substantive misgivings about India’s role in Afghanistan play an even bigger role in shaping Pakistani military’s misadventure. Their aggressive anti-Indian mindset and frosty state of bilateral relations has rendered any genuine Indo-Pak rapprochement unattainable. As long as Pakistan’s security establishment does not reinterpret Pakistan’s national security narrative vis-à-vis India and Afghanistan, and accepts the supremacy of civilian leadership, the well-entrenched terrorist networks will continue to harm Pakistan’s and regional security. Although the US Senator John McCain, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Service, who recently visited Pakistan as part of a US delegation, has praised Pakistan’s anti-terror efforts, the price of Pakistan’s unnecessarily obstructionist policies are being felt in the continuous strains in the US-Pakistan relations.

Although there is no “off switch” for the Afghan insurgency somewhere in Islamabad, this is not to say that Pakistan does not control influential Afghan Taliban commanders. In March this year, Sartaj Aziz said, “We have some influence over them because their leadership is in Pakistan”. As long as Pakistan’s security establishment does not realise that the stability of Afghanistan inevitably threatens the stability of Pakistan, no viable road to peace is in sight in Afghanistan.

It is indisputably correct that terrorism is fatally hurting Pakistan, but there seems to be an intractable aversion to abandon it as a policy tool. However, the use of proxies in any shape is a disastrous policy in the longer run. Pakistan’s policy concerning the Afghan conflict must undergo a radical reorientation. If Pakistan hopes to keep the already troubled areas in a state of “controlled chaos” whereby its Afghan Taliban assets as well as the Haqqani network are preserved to be utilised to expand influence into Afghanistan after the eventual American drawdown, Pakistan is not thinking straight.

Pakistan’s immediate neighbours must be worried about the security implications of Pakistan’s apparent turnaround in the fight against terrorism, as reflected in a spate of policy statements from Sartaj Aziz. The international community must now ask Islamabad to clarify its real policy about those terrorists who are operating from Pakistani soil and staging attacks on Afghan territory. Aziz cannot save Pakistan from condemnation by saying that “Pakistan cannot fight Afghanistan’s war on its own soil”. It is as much Pakistan’s war as it is Afghanistan’s.

There can be no escape from frontal assault on Islamist radicalism and terrorism in all their manifestations. Pakistan cannot fight against some terrorist groups and not against others. It cannot dismantle one without the other. Is it possible to imagine a Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, had there been no Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan who were given shelter in Pakistan’s tribal areas? Experience and pragmatism strongly recommends that there is no such thing as controlled chaos as the chaos created by the hydra-headed monster called terrorism cannot be controlled: it can only be ruthlessly eliminated.

Instead of prolonging the war in Afghanistan, US and NATO must tackle the root of the problem - in Pakistan.
Last week, with the announcement of modified troop plans for Afghanistan, US President Barack Obama also reiterated that there would be no shift in US strategic thinking vis-a-vis Pakistan and that Washington has no desire to change the status quo.

After the killing of Taliban leader Akhtar Muhammad Mansur in Pakistan last May,many observers erroneously concluded that the incident was a "major break" and "a telling manifestation of the change in US-Pakistan relations", one which would "provoke a crisis" in the relationship between the two countries.
However, last Wednesday, while touching upon the killing of Mansur in a US drone strike, Obama deliberately made no mention of Pakistan, where Mansur and his predecessor, Mullah Omar, both lived and died in hiding.
It was therefore strange to hear the US president calling "on all countries in the region to end safe havens for militants and terrorists", with no reference to Pakistan at all.

Long-term strategic interests
From the Afghan perspective, this means giving assent to the Pakistani military's brutal war in Afghanistan in the guise of fighting the Taliban and the Afghan insurgency.

The US has major long-term strategic interests and objectives in Afghanistan and the region (South and Central Asia) which are being facilitated and protected through Pakistan and an open-ended US military presence in Afghanistan.
According to US calculations, Pakistan must remain in the US sphere of influence. This harsh reality is why Americans look the other way when Pakistan says one thing and does another.

"When Pakistani support becomes necessary, as during the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s," wrote Robert Grenier, a former CIA Chief of Station for Pakistan and Afghanistan, in 88 Days To Kandahar, "America finds a way to overlook Pakistani misdeeds and focus instead on common interests. After 9/11, we found ourselves in another such cycle."

After the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Pakistan's military rulers owned a policy of selective counterterrorism. While they detained and sold hundreds of al-Qaeda operatives to Washington, the Taliban's comeback in Afghanistan was accelerated from Pakistan, under US watch.
During the tenure of President Pervez Musharraf, "the ISI encouraged the resurgence by providing training, a safe haven, and even some advisers" to the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani terrorist groups to intimidate Afghanistan and challenge its stability.
The Bush administration "allowed Pervez Musharraf to give the Afghan Taliban a sanctuary", according to Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer, a senior adviser to US presidents and author of Deadly Embrace.

After the collapse of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the CIA received "no policy guidance" regarding senior Taliban leaders in Pakistan.

The CIA station in Pakistan "would come across reports indicating that members of the Taliban Shura were pitching up in Quetta or Karachi", but the "leads" were then passed to the Pakistani spy agency to investigate, as claimed by Grenier.
It was "obvious", he argued, that Pakistan had no intention of chasing the Taliban on its soil.

New post-Taliban strategy

For the Pakistani intelligence agency, in this new post-Taliban strategy, low-cost Pakistani terrorist groups from North Waziristan region also became an asset - beside the Afghan groups - to run a controlled chaos in Afghanistan.

The Pakistani government denies it but to Karzai's government, senior US officials disclosed accounts of Pakistani support for the Taliban and other anti-Afghanistan groups.

In his book, After the Taliban: Nation-Building in Afghanistan, James Dobbins, the special US envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, wrote that Pakistan's ISI and Frontier Force "collaborated with the Taliban and other insurgent groups operating out of Pakistan's border regions".
US Army General John Campbell, the last American and ISAF commander in Afghanistan, publicly acknowledged that "based in, and operating from Pakistan HQN [the Haqqani network] remains the most virulent strain of the insurgency" in Afghanistan.
The HQN "presents one of the greatest risks to Coalition forces, and it continues to be an al-Qaeda facilitator", he added.
The Pakistani government remains in a state of denial, stating that it "condemns all forms and manifestations of terrorism" and that peace in Afghanistan is in the "interests of Pakistan".

Nevertheless, whenever questioned on the lack of action against the Pakistani dimension of the conflict in Afghanistan, senior US officials including Obama repeatedly put Karzai in the picture that "Pakistan is not susceptible to an American military response".
But addressing the problem of Pakistan's relationship with terror, does not necessarily mean taking a military action against the country.
In a telephone conversation, in 2014, while discussing preparations for the Bilateral Security Agreement between the two countries, Obama told Karzai that Washington "cannot open another front against Pakistan". Pakistan is a strategic "ally" in the war on terror.
During a visit to Washington, in 2013, Obama asked Karzai to take Pakistan's "concerns" about the Indian influence in Afghanistan "seriously".
It was a baseless Pakistani narrative coming from a US president. I would argue that if, as a matter of fact, the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) has sanctuaries in Kunar (as claimed by Islamabad), and from there they plan and carry out attacks on Pakistan, Washington should be answerable for it. As late as mid-2014, there were "more than 60" small and big US military installations in the province.
Double dealing

In the fullness of time, the Bush and Obama administrations both remained largely passive to take firm action against Pakistan's double dealing in its foreign and security policies on Afghanistan. Today, like in the past, the Pakistani military establishment serves the US in securing its strategic interests in south and central Asia.

In this risky role, as stated by a former senior US official in Grenier's account, "the unwritten rule for Pakistan has been never to admit engaging in activities of which Washington disapproves; and in fact, such duplicity is tacitly welcomed by the Americans during times".
Yet, Washington will further risk trouble with Afghanistan and regional powers. Disregarding the undeniable role of Pakistan's military and intelligence services in nurturing and harbouring Taliban and other violent groups destined to upset the stability of the region will undoubtedly lead to calamity and ruin, in all likelihood another 9/11.

Instead of prolonging the futile war in Afghanistan, the US and NATO must tackle the origins of security threats and the key problem of sanctuaries in Pakistan.

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto has condemned the brutal murder of the Hamid Toori, the president of the party in Kurram Agency.

It may be mentioned that Toori was shot dead by unknown assailants in his office in Shablan District of Parachinar, the headquarters of Kurram Agency.

Bhutto strongly urged the relevant authorities to arrest the killers of Toori and give them an exemplary punishment.

He prayed to Almighty Allah to grant peace to the departed soul and courage and fortitude to the members of the bereaved family to bear this irreparable loss.

Former President Asif Ali Zardari has also strongly condemned the murder Hamid Toori and demanded immediate arrest of killers. Zardari urged that the Governor Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the political agent of Kurram Agency arrest the culprits immediately and punish them

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto on Tuesday reached Karachi from Dubai. PPP chief summoned important meeting of party leaders at Zardari House in Islamabad on Wednesday to devise strategy regarding the upcoming elections in Azad Kashmir and the anti-government campaign, reported Dunya News.

Bilawal will consult party leaders over the upcoming Azad Kashmir elections whereas the alliance of the Opposition parties regarding the anti-government campaign based on the revelations made in the Panama Leaks shall also be viewed from different angles.

PPP Chairman shall visit Rawalakot on Thursday whereas he shall pay visit to Muzaffarabad on Saturday. He shall stay in Islamabad till July 21 and will keep an eye over the Azad Kashmir elections.